Mary, Bloody Mary - Taylor Sinay

Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer

     For my book report, I chose the book Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer. Meyer began her love for writing at age 8 and carried her passion throughout school, graduating from Bucknell University with an English degree and continued writing while working and having a family. After her kids were grown and her husband divorced, she developed a new love of traveling to new places which she used to create ideas or research for her books. Because of her interest in learning before writing, her education, and a long lasting job in the journalism fields, I determine that this novel is valid and that the author was appropriate and was capable of writing this book to its full potential. She did so because of my own prior knowledge learned in class about the events occurring in the book about Mary Tudor and her life up close and personal as her father, King Henry VIII, reigned. 

     The time span throughout the story is approximately 15 years, starting at the age of 5 for Princess Mary Tudor when her father still saw her as "[his] perfect pearl of the world" and "the jewel of all England" (25). Soon after the book begins, King Henry VIII began to lose interest in his wife, Queen Catherine and gradually becomes attracted and mesmerized by a new acquaintance who doesn't stay an acquaintance for long. This surprises me because it happens abruptly quite early on and I truly thought that they were a happy, loving family. Her name is Anne Boleyn and she returns the king's flirting creating King Henry to become distant to Queen Catherine and his daughter, Princess Mary eventually parting from both and asking the church for a divorce. 

     After the church denies, they argue for a long period of time whether their marriage is valid or not considering that Queen Catherine was previously married to Henry's brother before his death. The church determines the marriage valid and revokes King Henry's request several times, propelling him to make his own Church of England. 

     All the while during her exile from the palace, her father, and her mother, Mary holds herself together throughout the entire novel. As a little girl, her father would brag about how "This girl never cries!" as he carried little Mary through the Great Hall (12). This is a theme throughout the book because she is always composed in public view of any and everyone. The only time she lets herself feel sorrow is when she is in solitude and weeps alone. As a child to an adult, Mary controls her emotions and awaits what she knows will eventually come. She believes she will be queen while her mother's voice echoes in her head such words.

    King Henry marries Lady Anne Boleyn after she becomes pregnant, following the outline of her plan to become queen. Also he officially divorces Catherine and makes Mary a bastard during his new marriage. Anne gives birth to a daughter and then also to a stillborn son which infuriates King Henry because he is still without a son to inherit the throne. Believing that Anne was involved with witchcraft, cursing the King's soul he turns cold and ages quickly. I do not believe Anne was a witch but I do believe she held inborn evil in her veins.

    King Henry then has an affair with Lady Jane Seymour. Catherine dies slowly from poison as Mary is stripped of her title and becomes a servant to Anne's daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who also becomes stripped of her title after their father divorces and executes Anne's head from her body and marries his new beloved partner, Queen Jane. I am left astonished as to how he treats the women he so "loved" and had sexual encounters with. 

     The pattern continues, as it is explained in the extra historical content at the end of the novel, totaling to six wives and Mary eventually ruling for five years after her bastard brother but ultimately Elizabeth becomes queen of England for the next 45 years. The novel described the young child Elizabeth as smart and much alike her mother. Inheriting ruling skills from her father and conniving and brains from her mother, of course Queen Elizabeth would turn out on top the way she did. 

     The title of the novel ties in at the end of the extra historical content, explaining that during Mary's reign she burned anyone for heresy and persecuted countless people for religious beliefs, "although no more brutal than those of any European monarchs- history remembers her as 'Bloody Mary'" (227).

     Living up to her expectations, the author Carolyn Meyer, gives historical information in a great plot. She exhibits events and feelings through the characters as the ink flowed from her pen and painted a picture in the reader's mind as to how history may have happened in a more detailed version.